Link love and not doing great at the February challenge

February 11, 2017 — nicoleandmaggie

I definitely have not been writing for an hour every morning at 8am. See, what happened was I had a whole plan all ready … and then I got a major grant*, but they need changes made before they can lock in the money and I really want to get the money locked in ASAP.

Saturday and Sunday I wrote for an hour each sort of in the morning, mostly grant stuff. Monday I did half an hour. Tuesday I did half an hour. Wednesday I did nothing. Thursday I did an hour. Friday I did half an hour. Mostly I did not write first thing in the morning because I was too busy scrambling to get ready for whatever 9:30am appointment I had that day. I had a lot of meetings (except on Thursday where I only had one!). Tomorrow I guess I will aim to get that referee report done that I’d planned on doing last weekend. I still have to read the article and I’m not going to read it tonight. Maybe Sunday I can try to figure out some actual article writing.

This is the first February challenge I’ve not been keeping up with come heck or high water. I’m a bit disappointed in myself on that front, but also I’ve been working 10-12 hour days on weekdays (7-5 or 7-7 depending on if I have to pick up a child) and several hours each day on weekends just to keep up with everything, so I’m cutting myself some slack on that front. Still, my end on the grant thing should be done as of today so I need to get back on track with my original plans. Wish me luck on that. (Also, I’ve been keeping my inboxes below 320 messages, but only by deleting around 40/day. It’s going to be a busy weekend.)

And now for some links! We tried a little harder for some cheerful non-political ones this week. It’s a little hard since I’m only reading two twitter feeds and am avoiding the news and #2 keeps sending me horrible articles(!) (technically, well-written articles about horrible things because you know, the US).

Go San Francisco! (part VIII is especially great) (SF is where the appeals court for the 9th circuit is) “Minutes after the ruling was released, President Trump denounced it from his Twitter feed. “See you in court,” he tweeted, in all caps.” (but then he didn’t)

I’m not sure I agree with this, but it is food for thought. I definitely think it’s important to make Neo-Nazis ridiculous again and to not give them a platform. At the same time, we’ve learned recently that we need to take racist threatening buffoons seriously.

Also, fight people who tell you activism isn’t worth it. My colleague who I yelled at for telling me my calls didn’t matter came to my office this week to tell me that maybe they did since the state legislature had tabled one of their awful alt-right bills– after public outcry, they’re not even going to vote on it.

Note on the videos– this first one here for me is like taking Valium. Does anybody else get that sense of zen? DH doesn’t– he feels super trippy, but not like he’s successfully meditated. I feel like it takes over the part of my brain that’s constantly worrying about the state of the world.

I have strong feelings about the idea of a country-wide general strike, especially in the current context, because of the privilege issues. The women’s strike that keeps gets floated about frustrates me even more, because it advocates stopping unpaid work, which assumes that there’s a man around to pick up caregiving duties.

That whole Milo playbook article gives me the heebies. “Just don’t listen or react with outrage” isn’t exactly a useful technique to combat racist people who make threats – some of them follow through and/or inspire others.